We all want to deliver quality experiences to our customers. Before we can ensure a quality experience for our customers, it is essential to establish a clear definition of quality specific to the product we are developing. Once established, embracing continuous testing becomes crucial as it can increase the speed at which features are delivered to customers, enhancing the overall customer experience.
Quality is subjective. W. Edwards Deming wrote that “quality can only be defined in terms of the agent.” The development team will need to understand quality from the point of view of each of the agents for the product they are working on. An example would be If you were to consider agents for a book. The first agent for a book is the writer, and for the writer, quality could be, considering whether they got their message across. Another agent would be a printer; for the printer, quality would relate to the size of the print run, the quality of the paper, and the quality of the ink. The publisher is another agent for a book. For the publisher, quality may be whether they sold many books. The reader is another agent; for the reader, quality would be whether the book was a good read or contained some spark of information. The development team needs to work out who the agents are for their products and what quality is for them. Some of the agents will be external, such as a manager at one of their customer’s offices, and some of the agents will be internal such as Customer Success. Once the team has identified the agents, it can then develop a testing strategy to achieve a quality experience for each of the agents.